I had this moment before this game came out where I was like, "Man, I really wish other gacha companies loved their games as much as Hoyoverse seems to." At the time, the game was like, a week away from release? I was honestly still coming off of the high that was Star Rail's 2.2 patch, despite my problems with how the company's love for their game works inversely with how gacha affects their game.

Because I was expecting this game to have a boring story with boring characters, something that Honkai Star Rail and 3rd (and Genshin, to an extent) are pretty good at not doing.

Having said that, despite this game being jankier than its competitors, I've been having fun. While it is essentially a weird cocktail of Honkai Impact 3rd (combat), Genshin Impact (mostly this with its open world exploration and a number of its systems), and Star Rail (hey there Simulated Universe and Stelle-lite), it addresses...almost specifically, a lot of problems I have with that second game.

Genshin is definitely prettier than WuWa but WuWa a lot of the times feels like it's smugly introducing a feature because it knows Genshin isn't doing it, like the skip feature or the ability to run up walls in place of the nightmare that Genshin has (which is just a worse form of what BotW did but that game felt way more fluid and less frustrating to climb in). Being able to air dash, items not having to be picked up manually, a glider that handles much better...this game was clearly made by people who played a lot of Genshin Impact.

However where this game excels is in its other parts. For instance, the combat for the game borrows a lot from Honkai Impact 3rd, and this was really funny to experience for the first time because having played HI3rd last (it's fun), I always wondered what it must've been like for fans to go from that to the much slower and less nuanced system that was in Genshin. Fighting feels great, and the addition of parries and dodges just feel good to do, especially in boss fights with strongly choreographed attacks that have a high pay off for learning them. There's also a decent amount of enemy variety which is frankly surprising and something that isn't really given as much praise as it probably deserves.

Also, the echoes. This is probably my favorite thing about the game, but I love this silly little pokemon aspect of fighting monsters, getting their echoes, and using them as attacks in battle. It reminds me a lot of the Castlevania Sorrow series in a good way, and while I'm still scratching my head over the equipment system, I generally like it so far.

Worried about those substats though.

And if it seems like I'm just glazing this game up it's because it's free, doesn't take up that much space, and I've kind of just had a good time. Yeah it has some jank, yeah the English dubbing is currently pretty bad (will likely get better in the future if this game keeps going), and yeah the story's nothing to write home about but in terms of being a fun experience? It clears Genshin Impact pretty immediately.

Anyway, don't spend your money on this. Also, fun fact I might as well end on. So, in regards to the English dub, most of the voice actors are British. In fact, if you look at some of the castings, you'll recognize some voices from Xenoblade and Final Fantasy XIV (Fiora/Tataru being a notable example). I'm bringing this up because very few characters in the game have british accents, and the few that do are NPCs. I'm bringing that up to say that the reason this dub is so odd is because of the direction, there are a lot of talented voice actors on board, and ironically the best performances in the game are NPCs. It's really noticeable, that direction bit, when you hear the main characters strain themselves to speak with some sort of American accent when that's not in their range currently, so as a result some words will come across with a strange accent or said differently than you'd expect.

Free them please. I'd just say play in Chinese or Japanese until a major patch pops up since they seem to be working on the voice work.

Oh and glad this game has punchy people. More games need punchy people. Every game needs punchy people.

Started to play this with a group of friends and, in typical D&D fashion, we could never decide on a good time where we’d all be available to play together again.

Aside from that, Baldur’s Gate 3 is a genuine masterpiece, although I don’t need to tell you this since it won like. every game award ever in 2023. I don’t think I can do this game justice with one of my own reviews so I suggest you just give this one a go yourself. Let the 50,000 trophies on Larian’s shelves for this game be a good reason to give Baldur’s Gate 3 a shot.

Started a new game the day the news broke of James McCaffrey’s death. RIP to a legend, his final performance as Max has so much to look back fondly on. The anger, disgust and defeat in his voice as he fights his way through hell, and his likeness as Max, while I of course love the Sam Lake face, the old hardened look of Max was perfect for James’ evolution of the character.

What a brutally bleak game too, the graphic gunfights, bullet wounds and body physics I remember well from playing this on release but the storyline and fate of so many characters really hit harder this time, just the constant death and bloodshed, you really feel Max’s spirit breaking each time as he stops caring for his own safety and just wants to enact revenge for whoever’s responsible for each heinous act.

Of course HEALTH’s score is incredible and everyone talks about the airport sequence at the end but all throughout the game as well it’s just pummeling and intense, pounding drums and throbbing rhythms, when bullets are whizzing and glass is shattering all around you and the music is just pumping overtop the chaos with these dark, pulsating, almost primitive beats, it’s intense as hell and at times feels almost horror-like, as if something big and scary is coming towards you. One of the best parts of the game hands down, gets you right there in action feeling like you’re surrounded by it.

Played this on Xbox 360 and I have to say I loved how the first disc, which has the artwork of Max with hair on it, ends right when he shaves his head, and the second disc, which has the shaved head and floral shirt artwork, starts immediately with the scene of him debuting that look. Well played, Rockstar, whether intentional or not.

I fucking love this game and I can’t wait for the Remedy remakes of the first two, I’m really interested as to how they’ll handle them with McCaffrey’s passing but whatever they do we all know it will honor the man’s legacy and the beloved character we all admire.

In a world where AAA gaming is dominated by C-suite mandates to create premium products made strictly by and for continuous consumption, it is a miracle we've gotten a game like Alan Wake II, with Sam Lake taking an even harder swing into the realm of the confident auteur. No concept is too obtuse, no idea too far-fetched, no mechanic too weird to attempt. To say it came together is to minimize the calculated post-modern approach to this gripping and looping narrative that Remedy Entertainment has accomplished. We are lucky to get a project like this that pushes the medium far beyond what many others are even attempting to do in this space. Alan Wake II has seriously restored my faith in what prestigious AAA gaming can and should be. Masterpiece.

...𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘴𝘢𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘵 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘱𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘳𝘰𝘢𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘐 𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘰𝘯 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦...